Landscapes of Memory

Landscapes of Memory is the first site of memory located in a place where part of the terrible violence that characterized Guatemala’s IAC was perpetrated, including detentions, forced disappearances and torture. The site is a former military detachment that was turned into a clandestine cemetery and later reclaimed by the National Coordinator of Widows of Guatemala (CONAVIGUA).

The organization, founded by widows, many from the Comalapa region, who have been searching for their missing relatives for decades, filed a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office in 2003 to investigate the area, which resulted in the opening of a legal case and a series of exhumations. From August 2003 to December 2005, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG) carried out excavations and found 53 graves with 220 skeletons1 of people showing signs of violence.2 CONAVIGUA coordinator Rosalina Tuyuc says of the findings: “Our dead have spoken. Every time a clandestine grave is opened, they are the ones who speak. When we find them blindfolded, with their mouths shut, with their hands and feet tied.”

In the years following the exhumations, CONAVIGUA decided to buy the land and turn it into a site of memory, “dedicated to all the victims of forced disappearance in Guatemala. This is a Site of Dignity and Reparation for the families who have not stopped searching.”3 In the center of the site we find the Nimajay, the Big House, a tribute to the victims of Comalapa. Its exterior walls are decorated with paintings that depict the testimonies of those who suffered the violence, as well as Mother Earth who sheltered them; the walls also show elements of the Maya Cosmovision.

Landscapes of Memory was inaugurated and opened to the public on June 21, 2018, the National Day against Forced Disappearance. The 220 skeletons that were found are buried here; those who were identified have their names there. The Wall of the Disappeared lists and commemorates more than 6,000 disappeared people reported to FAFG over the course of its work in Guatemala. In the center of the wall is a monument to Dr. Clyde Collins Snow, the forensic anthropologist who promoted the creation of FAFG and who asked to be buried alongside the victims of the Guatemalan IAC.

Location: Kilometer 77.5 Carretera a San Juan Comalapa, Paraje Palabor, Comalapa, Chimaltenango, Guatemala.

Visit by booking in advance at: https://memorialcomalapa.org